Economic model

Context

The exploration scope is broad and it can't be done by one person alone: to start scratching those possibilities, the Inventaire project - or whatever the name it takes in the future - needs to become a structured organization with full-time paid contributors. This result in two organizational axes:

a public interest mission

an obligation of economic viability

Economic roadmap

Inventaire should be a contributive project: in a first time, volunteer contribute unpaid because they like the project and share its objectives. They are free to self-assign tasks (contributing to code, design, communication etc). This trello board was created for that purpose.

In a second time, when Inventaire's revenue model becomes clearer, the organization will get more structured: the project would ideally become a public interest company (a coop ?) led by a team of paid full-time contributors/associates, helped by part-time unpaid contributors, following Wikimedia or Mozilla model. Other track to explore: open value accounting

That's the vision, but there is a long way to go and potentially many changes ahead as the project is very young (for instance, if our explorations lead to find a way to make Inventaire work on a fully decentralized architecture, the infrastructure costs would be totally different, and some of the present hypothesis may become irrelevant), so I don't want to make promises I'm not sure I can keep: for the moment, all I can say is that if you like the project and want to contribute, you are very welcome to do so, and I will do all I can to help you!

Clues on the revenue model

it won't be advertising

it won't be selling users data

it might be donations/crowdfunding/free pricing system

it might be a form of freemium with a premium offer targeting professional users